I used 2 aliases as it was generally, pre-Facebook, not deemed a good idea to use your real name as - shades of Dresden Files here - who knows what someone might do with it?

I'm pretty much in agreement with Hav, I need a gap between life and online activity. Facebook? Uh uh, no way, it's a nice idea in theory but look how it's worked out in practice. It's got to a point where companies look at your Facebook page to decide whether or not to hire you! That's wrong on multiple levels and is, I suspect, more likely than anything to kill the steady stream towards free and easy disclosure of information online. Give it a few years and some companies will be going: We've got this application but there's bugger all info about him online! Uh, yeah - why do you think that is? Action, reaction and so on.

Meeting up with people you've been talking stuff with online for years offline is often a whole lot of fun. Not least because, net personas aside that I really don't get in the main, it's amazing how much someone's personality is accurately reflected in the online self they choose to present. For all people have of this notion that people are duplicitous, game-playing scumbags online I haven't found any truth to it.

Then again I'm active here, primarily Lit and another board and both have a Mod policy that says: You will get the crap kicked out of you if you act like a git, it isn't very hard to not act like a git therefore don't do it! After a while that becomes self-reinforcing on a community level and the Mods get to sit their backsides and enjoy posting again.

There is one person who's already met me . . . well, technically two, if you count VIPs. So I'm willing to do it.

Now hold on. I want to hear about that second one. The time you and Troy met up at a bar, he offered you that sweet gig cowriting Jacen's 5 year mission trilogy, and you got wasted and made a crack pun about the 1-armed Twi'lek, lost your single opportunity at fame, and have been bitter ever since.

29.)
@Havac, you rightly mentioned the greatness of Darth Sidious in one of your previous answers. I would invite you to expound upon your admiration and complete subservience to His Imperial Majesty as a character, antagonist, and galactic savior; impart some wisdom to the heretical and rebellious.

Well, informing me of its existence certainly improved your chances. I don't normally go to cons because they're not really my thing in general, and I have a wedding out of town in the middle of that anyway . . . but if you want to run into me outside the con, let me know.

26) Which Star Wars character (movie, EU, etc) do you most identify with?

I don't know. I don't tend to identify extremely closely with characters . . . I'm the most invested in the X-wing characters and Han . . . let's say Wedge, Han, Jacen, Obi-Wan, Ben, Jag, and Corran, whom I don't even like as much as most of the others but I guess I identify really strongly with.

27) How do you think Lit's relationship with VIP posters has changed since you first joined the boards?

Well, I signed up right in the middle of the Traviss affair, so I guess they can only go up from there. Really, I think the fundamentals are still the same. Lit likes having VIPs here, there are beloved VIPs who are a huge part of the community and get along great with Lit, and those VIPs whose work doesn't click with the community or is really controversial don't tend to stick around. If anything's responsible for a change, I think it's been the diminishing response to the work that's been put out.

28) Which non-human species is your favourite and/or do you want to see more of?

I like having aliens around a lot, but I've never really latched onto particular species. I guess I'm inclined to be really interested in the Chiss, because we've seen enough of their culture that there's something to get interested in, and they're an important, mysterious faction living in a neat part of the galaxy, and we know just enough about them to get me hungry to see more of the picture.

The NR patriot in me also has to love the Mon Calamari. I'm maybe more attached to them emotionally than most other species. I'm kind of partial to Wookiees, too, though I get tired of seeing them overused.

Most of my feelings about aliens aren't so much partiality as it is reaction to their facetime. I'm sick of seeing a billion Twi'leks all the time as everyone's go-to alien, and I'd like to see more of species that are supposed to be important and widespread, like Duros and Khils, or that have neat histories or OOU nostalgia cred, like Herglics. Or if a species is culturally interesting, like the Hutts, I want to see more of them because I want to explore that culture and history.

29.)
@Havac, you rightly mentioned the greatness of Darth Sidious in one of your previous answers. I would invite you to expound upon your admiration and complete subservience to His Imperial Majesty as a character, antagonist, and galactic savior; impart some wisdom to the heretical and rebellious.

Darth Sidious is the greatest Sith Lord of all time. He is insanely powerful, with unrivaled mastery of the dark side, creating new techniques and abilities at will. He should be portrayed at all times as incredibly cunning, subtle, powerful, and cultured, and as the absolute pinnacle of sophisticated evil. This is because he is the greatest archvillain in the galaxy and one of the greatest pure-evil archvillains of all time. Nothing should be done to diminish him as a character or minimize the threat he posed to the galaxy as the greatest dark side menace of all time, a schemer so talented, so successful, so unutterably powerful that he was able to assume control of the galaxy through guile and popular support rather than force, rule to popular acclaim, and corrupt the galaxy so thoroughly and so securely that he would have annihilated it utterly, absorbing all life into himself and dooming the galaxy forever, that only the intervention of Luke and Anakin Skywalker, the only beings powerful enough to defeat him and important enough to him to have the opportunity, could save the galaxy from utter ruin.

1. Time for the username question! Why did you choose it? Has it always been your username, or did you go by a different one in the past?

2. Where are you originally from? Are you currently living there, or did you move elsewhere?

3. What do you do for a living?

These will all be slightly easy for me.

1) This is the username I've always had. It was my login at college and they changed how they assigned them I believe in my sophomore year (as opposed to the easily identifiable first initial-last initial-two random alphanumerics) to something more reasonable. As they were never going to be recycled and fairly unlikely to be used in error (except potentially in Denmark apparently), I just kept using it so people could find me.

2) I'm a New Yorker.

3) I am your walking stereotype: the New York, Jewish, banker (though I work in IT).

4. Is there any Star Wars era that you prefer? (Old Republic, Clone Wars, NJO, etc) Are there any that you could do without?

If you had to pin me down to a favorite, it's the Galactic Civil War era. Those are the movies that got me hooked; it encompasses all of the stuff I loved (and I include The Han Solo Adventures in there) and included West End Games, which I played an immense amount of time as well as really, really starting the fully-fleshing out of the "bible" for the overall canon of the GFFA. Plus, I can look back fondly of the Super Star Destroyer being a reasonable length instead of it's extremely-long penis-envy size now.

That isn't to say that I don't really love at least parts of the other eras. I really and truly didn't like The New Jedi Order, but I commended (and still do) Del Rey/Random House for the quality and diversity of writers they tried to get to write for the series even if some of those books ended up not great. Similarly, with The Clone Wars project -- some of the books weren't my cup of tea (and some weren't others' cups of tea), but I really and truly appreciated the idea of "what happens if we run out our novels in completely different styles?" (military sci-fi, a Heart of Darkness-esque bottle episode, squad based tactical combat, etc.). I'm also unabashedly a Bantam fan from way back, as well as Dark Empire as Luke-as-badass is awesome always (even if he turned to the Dark Side, sorry
@ChildOfWinds)

I'd say if I could leave an era, it'd be The Old Republic -- I played the games, the novels and MMORPG are "eh" (though I apparently liked Red Harvest a lot more than others did) but the original CRPG is still of the awesome. Meatbags.

As in high school "yearbook picture" homeboy (see
@ChildOfWinds I still love you!).

I have a lot of love for a bunch of other characters (shooting-first Han, Leia, droids, most of Ben, Anakin Solo, YJK-Jacen, Bey, Ulic) but everything for me revolves around an upstanding, moral and wise Jedi Master Luke.

However, I will take this opportunity to give a shout-out to the greatest thing ever to come from the comics: